Is Eric There, Please?

A tentative $13 billion settlement between JPMorgan and the Justice Department was a result of extensive personal outreach from Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, to the Justice Department.

—NYTimes.com.

JAMIE DIMON: Is Eric there, please?

RECEPTIONIST: May I ask who’s calling?

DIMON: Jamie Dimon.

RECEPTIONIST: Did you say, “Jamie”?

DIMON: Yes.

RECEPTIONIST: I’m sorry, isn’t that a girl’s name?

DIMON: It can be a boy’s name, too. Is he there, please?

RECEPTIONIST: Please hold.

(A beat as Dimon is placed on hold. Music is heard—the Clash’s rendition of “I Fought the Law.” After a minute or so . . .)

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: This is Eric.

DIMON: Eric, it’s Jamie Dimon.

HOLDER: Jamie. Hey. That’s weird. My assistant said there was a girl named Jamie on the phone.

DIMON: There are a lot of guys who are named Jamie, O.K.?

HOLDER: Jamie Farr, from “M*A*S*H.”

DIMON: Exactly.

HOLDER: His character dressed like a woman, though, right?

DIMON: So listen. I think we should meet.

HOLDER: What, like, for dinner?

DIMON: No. For a business meeting.

HOLDER: Oh.

DIMON: Why? Would you ever want to have dinner?

HOLDER: It doesn’t have to be dinner. A walk would be nice. Maybe a coffee?

DIMON: Both sound great. Let me tell you the reason I’m calling. A few of the guys over here—the board, for example—we’re a little concerned about some . . . money stuff. Like, that maybe you guys are still thinking of, uh, bringing charges against us.

HOLDER: O.K., I can’t believe you’re asking me that, because I have and I loved it. And, honestly, I don’t like musical theatre as a rule.

DIMON: Right? Blew me away. When they shake that piece of fabric to make it look like it’s a river?

HOLDER: Julie Taymor.

DIMON: Julie Taymor.

HOLDER: Anyway.

DIMON: So you’re definitely suing us?

HOLDER: Can’t really talk about it.

DIMON: How do you like being a lawyer?

HOLDER: I like it. But I can’t say I love it. You know?

DIMON: Totally.

HOLDER: Law school was a fallback. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

DIMON: Same. No sane person becomes a banker.

HOLDER: Is there a lot of math in your job?

DIMON: So much. And I’m terrible at math.

HOLDER: I know.

DIMON: Funny. What do you call twenty-five attorneys buried up to their chins in cement?

HOLDER: Here it comes . . .

DIMON: Not enough cement.

HOLDER: You guys paid back all the money we loaned you, right?

(Both laugh really hard.)

DIMON: Sure did. So listen to this. My kid brings me over to Williamsburg the other day. Have you been there?

HOLDER: Colonial Williamsburg? Sure. I love it. They churn their own butter.

DIMON: No, no. This is a neighborhood in Brooklyn.

HOLDER: Oh. No. Never heard of it.

DIMON: Listen to this. Like, every guy has a beard.

HOLDER: I don’t understand.

DIMON: Almost every man I saw—twenty-two to maybe forty—had a big beard, like they live in the woods or something, and I don’t know why.

HOLDER: Bizarre. Blankfein grew a beard. What’s up with that?

DIMON: No idea. I saw him recently. Asked him about it. He said it was symbolic, that each whisker on his face—he said he’d had a team of first-year derivatives guys count them—each whisker represented something important in his life. One might be passion, one might be love, one might be a child. He pointed to four that represented helicopters. But the bulk of his face, he said, was money. He said his entire chin was Palm Beach real estate.

HOLDER: Had he been drinking?

DIMON: That’s the weird thing. I don’t think so.

HOLDER: Lloyd.

DIMON: I feel like I understand less as I get older.

HOLDER: Same.

DIMON: Do you ever . . .

HOLDER: What?

DIMON: Do you ever . . . do you ever look out the window in the late afternoon and just get . . . sad? Like, for no reason?

HOLDER: Almost every day.

DIMON: I’ll walk around the office some days and just see people crying at their desks for no outward reason.

HOLDER: Same here.

DIMON: Total change of subject, but would you ever want to go camping?

HOLDER: That was weird, because you read my mind. I have a two-man tent and, like, fourteen canteens.

(Both laugh for a long time.)

DIMON: Now, in terms of a fine . . .

HOLDER: Yeah.

DIMON: I was talking with some of the guys here and we were thinking, like, a billion maybe would be good.

DIMON: So you feel like we were . . . were bad, the guys and me, at the bank here.

HOLDER: Pretty much, yeah.

DIMON: Huh. That’s so weird, because we weren’t thinking that at all. We were thinking, you know, we made a lot of money and that that was, like, good.

HOLDER: Interesting. I guess for me it’s how you made the money?

DIMON: Not sure I understand. Why would that matter?

HOLDER: Well, over here it’s kind of the . . . what’s the word . . . the essence of the whole thing.

DIMON: Like . . . rules and stuff.

HOLDER: Exactly.

DIMON: Like that . . . what do you call it . . . Vulcan Law?

HOLDER: Volcker Rule.

DIMON: Yeah, that one. That’s funny, because we didn’t really take that one very seriously. We actually have a copy of it up on a wall and people kind of point at it and laugh, because, I mean, it’s just funny.

HOLDER: I think that’s where we differ a bit.

DIMON: Interesting. O.K., then. Well . . . I should probably talk with some of the guys.